Monetary influences are dividing the community

April 15, 2014

In response to "Feeding the world cannot be done without GMOs" (Letters, April 10): Chemical farming depletes soil of the microbes, lessening nutrition and destroying communication pathways - weakening plant, animal and human immunity. It also radically increases the amount of toxins we have to process.

The big question is: Why is it that a community can be so deeply divided on this topic? Why are good-intentioned people willing to thwart others' rights to know what's in their food and attempt to force us to live with monetarily influenced decisions?

This adversarial environment can only be perpetuated via an interest-based economy that demands growth at any cost.

We've reached a point, well into the danger zone, where the only thing left to monetize is the commons - our food, water, atmosphere, our minds and bodies. We've allowed ourselves to become unconscious consumers at the trough of a profanely parasitic economic imperative. Where the biotech companies have handsomely rewarded our neighbors who have chosen to drink the GMO Kool-Aid, those who have followed a more organic path have had to struggle against the force of money. But our power is in accepting responsibility that we have to be OK with a static economy of what we need and not all-out greed. We might have to work a little harder, but we'll have a better chance of being here.

As for genetic engineering, it might do some good if there wasn't so much conflict of interest surrounding the intention.